As it comes to the end of January Beverley & District have had a great month with lunch club still to look forward to on the last day of January. We have had two interesting meetings the first entitled -Merchandising and Branding – Why to we favour one over another. Clever advertising or is down to cost. Do we concern ourselves with ethics, sustainability or do we just pay lip service to it? A short video challenged us to recognise brands without their words and the short quiz got us thinking about words without pictures. We questioned why some ‘offensive to us’ language is used on clothing labels aimed at our grandchildren, their cost and how they reach their target markets ie. Tic Tok not TV. We learnt about companies striving to become registered BCorp’s and why and what it should mean to all of us as consumers. Our second meeting What’s in a Name – Research the origins of your surname to share with the group. Ten of us enjoyed hearing the origins of not just married names but some rather unusual maiden names including from members who couldn’t attend so emailed their contributions to be read out to all. Many names where of French origin some where German, Latin or old English, while others where ‘location’ or ‘work’ based. We discovered high born, low born and many family clusters that have never moved out of a very local area whilst other have grown branches all over the world.